D-CLAIM is a Dallas-based jazz & literature collective founded by poet/bassist J.D. Debris, backing contemporary poets with hypnotic live-band grooves. Sponsored by Project Poetica at SMU English, D-CLAIM brings together hip-hop tinged jazz with a poetry reading on the third Thursday of every month, highlighting an improvisational confluence of words and music.

Tawanda Mulalu was born in Gaborone, Botswana. His first book, Please make me pretty, I don’t want to die (Princeton University Press, 2022), received the 2023 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry and was listed as a best poetry collection of 2022 by The Boston Globe, The New York Times and The Washington Post. His poems have appeared in Brittle Paper, Lana Turner, Lolwe, The New England Review, The Paris Review, A Public Space and elsewhere. He currently lives in Plano, TX.

D-CLAIM has been praised by the Dallas Observer for possessing a “spark that allows the poetic medium to evolve while also giving jazz new material.” Their sound, featuring the original compositions of bandleader J.D. Debris, combines the lyricism of Gil Scott-Heron, the low-end explorations of Esperanza Spalding, and hypnotic grooves informed by East Coast boom-bap and Brazilian soul.

Musicians
Ste’fon Landers, saxophone
Manny Galindo, piano
Nicholas Rothouse, percussion
Ian Yoo, drums
J.D. Debris, bass

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